A look at Locke & Key’s Numbers …

I was thinking about doing Deadpool today, but curiosity had me looking up some indies and I was really surprised at what I found. One of my favorite series these days, Giant Days, only appears in the top 300 once, with issue #1 … After that, it’s been selling below 300 other comics every single month? Really? Less than 5,000 copies per month, possibly closer to 2,000 … Wow! You should really give it a shot, people, you’re missing out on a very funny series. But I digress …

Issue #1 sold 7,560 copies

It was my impression that Locke & Key had become a sold-out sensation overnight, but looking at the sales numbers it doesn’t look like that at all. In fact, it’s the very last issues of the series of mini-series and one-shots that sold the highest. This probably means that there should be a bit of interest in back issues, right?

Small World, last issue to appear so far, sold 15,191 copies

Why talk about Locke & Key? It’s an amazing series if you haven’t read it, with a stable creative team (Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez) that have a story to tell and manage to tell it at their own pace. Also, I think this property is going to remain alive for the foreseeable future. There are plans for more comics and Joe Hill is taking a go on the screenplay for a TV treatment (it already got a pilot back in 2011 but Fox decided to pass), so I would really say this has some staying power.

So how low are the numbers (according to comichron)? Well, 2/3 of the series sold less than 10K, which is low as it gets. Those that sold more than that are the first issues of Head Games and Clockworks, Omega #1-5, Alpha #1-2 and the one-shots Grindhouse and the recent Small World. As I mentioned above, the last ones to come out have been (most recent first) Small World, Alpha, Omega and Grindhouse, so even if the sales numbers are still relatively low (this is a horror comic after all), the interest seems to be growing.

The real interesting bits are on the opposite side of the numbers, though, here are the lowest selling issues for the four minis that sold the least:

Locke & Key #26,122 copies

Locke & Key: Keys To The Kingdom #46,634 copies (has 1:10 Variant)

Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows #56,818 copies (has 1:10 Variant)

Locke & Key: Clockworks #27,686 copies (has 1:10 Variant)

The only one of this that’s easy to understand is #2 getting some of that issue #2 tough love retailers have been forced to give. In any case, if you like Locke & Key, I don’t think the comics are only going to get more difficult to get. What do you think?

This is one of the all time greats …its up there with Sandman and its only a matter of time before its the hottest show on the air
from a spec point i`d look at either the second printing or the dynamic forces variants 3000 print run and 1999 on the Negative one